


Butterflies and Hurricanes

by dvs



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-05
Updated: 2010-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dvs/pseuds/dvs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team is urged to change a future they don't know, by being thrown back to a past that might have made them who they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterflies and Hurricanes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Back to Basics Challenge.](http://community.livejournal.com/atlantisbasics/10521.html)

"_Dheymbhas_," she says, her voice echoing in the dark.

Rodney's floating somewhere between the ground and the ceiling and his breathing seems to echo off the strange metal walls that can't be seen, but he knows are there.

“I...I don't know,” Rodney whispers, frowning into the dark. He swallows, his parched throat almost painful. “I don't understand.”

“_Aynseto_,” the voice urges, thick and old. “_Aynseto_.”

Rodney makes an incoherent sound, whimpering as his body shakes, pinpricks of ice pushing apart every atom.

His fingers jerk back, his hands turning into fists and fingernails digging into his own palms, just hovering over the keys of the piano.

It's hard to breath, his chest stuttering as he tries. Rodney braces himself against the piano with one hand until his heart stops hammering so hard and he's not sweating and shivering at the same time.

“You okay?”

Rodney almost falls off the stool when he hears the voice. He manages to twist around, unsteady and a little confused.

Staring at him like he's completely mad, his sister is standing by the door and watching him. “Rodney?”

“Jeannie,” Rodney says slowly. He looks around the room, perfect in every detail. More perfect than his memories. He gets up, turning around and around, looking for clues and cracks because where there's a way in there's a way out. “What are you trying to do? I don't understand you,” he says.

“Rodney, are you okay?” Jeannie says and his mind feels the stamp of a memory he's sure he never had before. He feels smudged, an ink stain that's had its boundaries broken.

Rodney turns to look at Jeannie. “You're not my sister,” he snaps because he knows. He knows that this morning he was on a mission, which means he can't be here, in a place that's long ago.

Jeannie seems to pale, stepping backwards. “Mom!” she yells towards the landing.

Rodney laughs, shaking his head. They're making him believe these are his memories. That this happened. That he remembers this. He closes his eyes, shakes his head in protest and says he's not playing this game. All this time, there's a noise in his head, the slamming shut of a piano lid, the keys disappearing for a long time.

“_Obeyo_,” she rasps as his eyes snap open to see darkness.

He's lying shuddering on the table he's strapped onto, the surface beneath him cool. His stomach clenches and he thinks he'll throw up all over himself; a perfect addition to his state.

“You know, I'm more useful,” Rodney manages past the shuddering and trembling of his body, “if you stop trying to poke holes in my brain.”

“_Obeyo_,” she repeats and it all starts over.

Technically, Ronon has no strength left, but it doesn't stop his violent thrashing, his body surging up from the table, while his wrists and ankles remain restrained. He growls in frustration when his body flops back without having achieved anything.

“_Reverto_,” the woman says.

Ronon looks towards her voice. She's somewhere close by in the dark. Her word almost means something.

No words of his own to offer, Ronon grunts and tightens his fists, willing his muscle and bone to become stone. The restraints don't even budge. He lies there, breathing hard, his skin chilled, the sweat drying fast.

Ronon stares up into the strange moving darkness. “Who are you?”

“_Aynseto_,” replies the rasping voice and Ronon knows it's a command, not a question. She was never asking questions.

Cold touches his skin and he jerks away from it, not understanding how the dark blinked into a small gray/green room where beams of light are breaking through the slats of a window, keeping parts of the room hidden and illuminating the rest.

Ronon sits up and stares at this room, where he's been before. He jumps down from the table, watching the room spin around him and fall free of his memory. He knows this place well.

He wants to ask what the hell is going on and what the hell these people want from him, but some words sound like pleas despite their intention and he ends up picking up a chair and throwing it at the window. Defiance seems like the only thing he can offer right now.

Nothing happens, no one arrives. There's a clock on the wall and Ronon remembers Derwin was late. Only, Ronon's not back there, back then. Right now, he's in his mind and they're watching, searching for something.

Ronon turns towards the door. He'll just walk out. He'll walk out and end this recollection, expel the invaders from his mind.

Only, his hand closes around the doorknob and he suddenly remembers. He remembers being here. He remembers the sudden rage and the twisted metal of the chair that he threw with such force, his shoulder could feel the pain a week later. He remembers turning to leave and he remembers this. He remembers standing there, holding the doorknob, about to leave.

The only reason he doesn't open the door and leave is that he can't remember what happened next and he knows he should.

When he lets go, his body feels as though he's been plunged into ice. He lies there shaking, his muscles aching and his head about to explode.

“_Kwuyanam_?” she says, her voice still that thick rasp, like the sound of a heavy snake slithering through damp leaves, but this time he knows it's a question.

“_Kwuyanam_?” she asks again.

Teyla shakes against the table, her limbs trembling from living the same memory over and over again.

She closes her eyes and wonders what's there, what's so important they keep rooting it out. She wonders about the damage it's causing her mind, the memory changing ever so slightly every time, until she wonders what's real.

Something shuffles close by and her stomach clenches, her body convulsing.

“No,” she barely mumbles.

“_Reverto_,” the voice commands, growing angry.

Trying to control the trembling of her body, Teyla turns her head and strains to see the source of the shuffling, the owner of the voice perhaps.

Within the inky blackness, there's something darker, shifting and moving, hovering close. Teyla blinks away the wetness from her eyes and focuses on the shape.

"_Dheymbhas_," the voice says, slow and close by.

“I do not understand you,” Teyla grinds out in frustration.

The shape shifts and for the first time, Teyla sees more than just darkness. She sees something that might be a hand, a finger pointing somewhere in the distance. The skin seems damp and smooth in the dark. Looking closer, it almost seems to move like a thick and pale syrup. The smell of rot reaches Teyla's nose and she turns her head away, shutting her eyes tight as her stomach rolls, bile traveling upwards.

“_Aynseto_.”

Teyla gasps and opens her eyes. She's kneeling on the ground of the forest, trembling so hard she thinks her bones might shatter. Clawing the ground with her fingers, she lets out a pained noise, trying to control her breathing and stopping her body from shivering so hard.

Time seems to take forever to pass before the tremors subside and she can stand up.

She walks the same path from the lake to the settlement. She follows the same scent of incense in the air and reaches the circles where some of her people are showing off their skills with assorted weaponry.

She watches them all closely, but she watches Isha the closest. She moves through the circle as if the staffs are a part of her. She turns with the grace of a dancer and finds her aim as if it's effortless. Teyla imagines herself in that circle, defeating all that step before her and one day the Wraith.

She's heard some scoff that _sticks and stones do not break Wraith bones_. They are obviously not watching close enough. The strength is in the warrior, not the weapon.

Isha falters, her staff flying out of her hand and landing at Teyla's feet. She fights on, using one. Teyla watches in fascination for a while, before picking up the staff and throwing it back in, where Isha catches it in one fluid motion, smiling at Teyla and going on to defeat her opponent.

When Isha steps out of the circle and offers Teyla her favorite weapons, for there will always be a need for warriors, Teyla can't remember what to do.

“_Obeyo_.”

“I don't know...what you want me to obeyo,” John mumbles, his eyes stinging, his body numb with cold, beyond the shivers and shakes that wracked it before.

"_Dheymbhas. Obeyo_.”

John smiles, too exhausted to laugh. “Right.”

John's interrogator seems to slither closer to where he's lying on the table, wrists in restraints, though he's too tired to even lift his head, let alone escape. He doesn't even feel the long needles inserted under his skin anymore, the cold having remedied that pain.

John glimpses skin under a dark hood, too smooth, like melting plastic, an accompanying odor that makes John cough and wretch, involuntary tears escaping his eyes. He tries to look away, but a damp and lukewarm hand grabs his chin and forces him back. The skin touching his face moves in a way it shouldn't, like grease against a pane of glass.

John tries not to choke, his body shuddering, as the hood comes off and reveals an oval face, the skin drooping, giving the alien a sad and sleepy appearance, with slowly blinking eyes. The alien's face is too smooth. John wonders if he imagines the ripples beneath it. The odor is definitely real, like dust and rot, going straight to his gut.

“_Obeyo hec. Tu vol_,” she says, her voice a hiss from a mouth that barely moves as her hand tightens on John's face.

John jerks out of the grasp, a flare of anger going off somewhere in him. “No.”

“_Tu vol!_” she says, displaying anger for the first time, a flickering change of color in her eyes.

John defiantly stares back, his breath coming hard. “You don't get a damn thing until you tell me where my people are.”

The alien's face tilts to the side, eyes blinking rapidly and looking up and down the length of John's freezing body.

“Take a picture, it'll last longer,” John says.

The alien reaches out her hand again, stroking the side of John's face, the tip of a too soft finger at the corner of his eye. He tries to move away from the touch, his head pressing back onto the table, but her grip becomes hard and he feels something like pinpricks at his temple followed by a sharp searing pain.

He yells out in agony, his whole body tensing.

_Change this_.

John flinches at the voice echoing in his mind. “Get out of my head,” he grunts out.

_You will change this!_

“I don't understand,” John says, fighting the pain.

_Return. Change._

The hand is gone and he falls in a heap. He remains lying on the ground for a long time. He's relived this memory too many times now. He knows what happens next. He knows that his father will come running out into the yard and coax him awake from his fall.

There won't be questions about why he spends so much time up in a tree house. Just a moment of worry, followed by relief and then business as usual.

He hears his father running, calling his name, kneeling by his side. He feels the touch on his face, like it's real and happening right now. John opens his eyes and looks at his father, an eerie reflection of an older John Sheppard.

“I'm fine,” John says, before his father can ask.

His father smiles. “You are? Well, I guess you must have fallen on that hard head of yours.”

John lets himself be helped up, cataloging the differences in the last visitations to this memory. Memories made of memories; it's like being trapped in a hall of mirrors.

“John? You okay?” his father asks, hand squeezing his shoulder.

John nods absently. “Yeah. I'm fine.”

His father gives him a frown, like he's confused by something. Then he smiles and ruffles John's hair and John wants to say he's not a kid, only...maybe he doesn't mind it so much.

John's father gives him a pat on the back. “How about you and your old man go fishing for the weekend? Think you might want to put up with me for two days?”

No, John thinks, because one day he'll leave and all John will have left is the memory of a weekend where everything seemed perfect. He should've said no.

But this isn't real, John thinks. He looks down at the bruise forming on his wrist, remembering it well. His mother yelled at him and his father said boys will be boys.

He rushes back out of the memory like he's being sucked out of a tunnel, left shaking against the table. He's knows he's going to lose consciousness, he can feel the blackness creeping in on him, but before it completely engulfs him, he's sure that if he looks at his wrist right now, there's a huge bruise and swelling. It sure hurts that way.

“_Tu vol obeyo hec._”

“Yes, I heard you the first million times,” Rodney says, frustrated, his voice grating on his own ears. The alien hand reaches for him again and he shakes his head violently. “No!”

“_Aynseto!_”

“What the hell is this supposed to achieve?” Rodney yells, his body screaming in pain and his head pulsing, a deep throb at its center.

He thinks they're changing his memories, re-writing them somehow, screwing up his brain. He thinks this would be a good time for John, Ronon and Teyla to come in and beat the snot out of the bad guys. Especially if they want him to remain a genius.

Sitting at the piano and waiting it for all to begin again, change and begin again, Rodney's fingers pause over the keys. He clenches his jaw and glares at the piano. “I don't know what you want,” he says. “I don't know what you're looking for.”

“Rodney?” Jeannie asks.

“No,” Rodney says.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Rodney says.

When Jeannie silently withdraws from the room, Rodney remembers it as clear as the day it happened. Rodney reaches out for the piano book resting before him. He lifts a page and slides his finger down the edge, hard and fast until he feels the cut and hisses from it. He brings his finger close and watches the line of blood well up.

When he comes to on the table, he can feel the paper cut, sharp and fresh. He can feel the stickiness of his blood. “Who the hell are you?” he asks.

But all she says is, “_Obeyo._”

Ronon keeps it in mind. The nature of his ever changing memory. Why not any other memory? Why this one? Why do these aliens care at all?

“Do you understand?” Ronon's asked, once the rules of joining are read.

Ronon watches Derwin, sitting in front of the slatted window, on a chair that's not twisted. Ronon seems to be forgetting that it was ever twisted. It's fading and Ronon _knows_ he'll forget and it'll stop being real, though it was very real. This does not sit well with him at all.

“Once you do this, there is no going back,” Derwin says.

Ronon snorts. “That's what you said last time.”

He jerks hard against the table and laughs, the alien hovering nearby, turning his laughter into coughing.

“You want something?” Ronon wheezes. “You'll have to tell me what it is.”

The alien does a strange fluid head tilt, drunkenly blinking.

The strength comes and goes. Each visitation leaves her exhausted and shaking, slipping in and out of consciousness, until she's strong enough to endure another journey back.

Teyla lies there are under the watchful eye of the alien, wondering why it's the same memory over and over, never moving beyond Isha's offer of becoming her teacher.

Teyla's sure she said yes all those years ago. Didn't she? Maybe she didn't. Maybe that was a dream.

Teyla sways, her hand reaching out for the nearby tree. She steadies herself with both hands, waiting for the tremors to pass. She follows the path. Follows the smell of incense.

Isha repeats every single move. Everyone does everything they always do. All that seems to change is Teyla and her memory of this all. Every time she returns, she knows there's something she's supposed to do. Something she's been told to do.

Teyla frowns as Isha sweeps across the circle, her skirt whipping around her legs, doing nothing to slow her down.

The incense in the air is strong. When she wakes and smells it, she's sure it's not from memory. She's sure she's carrying it on her skin, in her hair.

_Change_.

John blinks back slowly, almost mimicking the alien. “Change what?”

_This_.

The alien holds out her hand, her strangely soft and almost dripping hand.

John stares. “How?”

_Return_.

John frowns. “I don't understand.”

_Return. Change past. Change future. Change this._

John watches the alien, the unnatural smoothness. The sickening odor. “What happened?”

The alien blinks, smooth brow creasing momentarily. There's almost a bitter smile on the putty like lips and John thinks he gets it.

_You_.

“Rodney, you're not making any sense,” his mother says, concern written all over her face as Jeannie watches from the doorway.

Rodney shakes his head. “Of course I'm not making any sense! I shouldn't even be here. Have you any idea what kind of trouble this could be causing?”

“Jeannie, get your father,” his mother says and when Jeannie doesn't move, she adds a stern, “Jeannie!”

Rodney just paces the room, scratching at his bottom lip with his thumb. He stops pacing and looks up at the ceiling. “You know, it would help if you told me what you wanted me to change.”

There's no answer, just his mother watching in horror, which he now remembers clearly. Great.

“Right, right. Of course. You're not here. You're somewhere in the future, dripping all over the place and smelling like bad mushrooms.”

Before he knows it, he's limp on the cold table and he can't remember how many times he's woken up and blacked out here. He can't remember how many times they've sent him back. All he knows is that he wants this to stop.

It just begins again.

Ronon falls back against the wall, weak like every time he returns to the memory. He steadies himself and looks at the clock. There's time to leave. There's always enough time to leave,

“What did we do?” he asks the silence of the room. “Tell me what we did!”

They never answer and if they choose to say something, it's in that strange wet darkness.

Everything spins and spins and within it, Teyla sees Isha's dance across the circle slower than everything else. The darkness turns to light and stench gives way to the familiar smoky smell of the settlement; wood, incense and spices. This is too real to be a memory.

This is as real as the odor of death worn by the aliens. As real as their unnatural skin that hangs and moves on them like it's forgotten to hold itself to muscle and bone.

“How did we do this?” she asks.

The alien's blink slows, the eyes darkening, the surface moving the same way the skin does.

John holds his wrist to his chest, grimacing and shaking his head. “I don't believe you.”

He looks up and squints into the bright light of the sun, his father already running towards him concern written all over his face. His father's words just wash over him, while he sits there not listening and wondering if this is real. The ground under his knees is solid. The leaves are crispy and dry around him. The pain in his wrist is excruciating all the way up his arm. His father's arm around his shoulders is solid and warm. John stares into a pair of eyes similar to his own and frowns.

_Change_.

Rodney slumps against the table. No more. He can't do this again. He slowly turns his head and looks at the face of the alien. He wonders if he did this to them. If it was all him. He doesn't believe it, but wonders if the others will.

Ronon can't imagine it, how this could happen. Or maybe he can. Anything can happen in war. He knows this first hand. He wonders what side of the war the aliens were on.

Teyla watches the alien walking around the table, the stench wafting over her, curling into her, sending tremors under her skin. Familiar tremors. She stares at the alien. “We did this to you,” she whispers.

The alien does that strange hypnotic tilt of the head again and under that thick floppy skin could be a smile, something satisfied and malicious.

“Who the hell are you?” John asks.

She reaches out for him and tenderly strokes the damp and oddly pliable flesh of her finger down his face, making him shudder. She traces his lips with it and then holds her hand over his face. In the darkness, he can see her palm, a mass of moving lumps.

But he sees something else too. A mouth that doesn't seem to have been used. Sealed shut, but quivering at the center of her palm.

John's eyes widen and he gasps. This has to be the last time. There's no more going back again.

"What do you want to do, Rodney?"

_Change this._

"There is still time to change your mind."

_Change this._

"Do you wish to learn how to fight?"

_Change this._

"How about it, John? You, me, fishing?"

_Change this._

Rodney feels himself jump back and forth, like his head is being pushed in and out of icy water.

Teyla feels as though her mind is reeling, as if she's falling through eternity, her head never settling long enough for her to find out where she is.

Ronon lurches away from the table, unable to distinguish between light and dark, the hand of Derwin, the hand of this alien.

John feels himself fall from the tree, like falling through molasses, his body breathless and heavy.

"Rodney?"

Rodney blinks up, tears in his eyes that he recalls as angry, but never having fallen. The answer's the same. It has to be. "I don't want to play anymore," he hears the voice of a child pretending not to care.

Isha smiles down at Teyla and holds out her own staffs, the ones she was just using. "Well?" she asks. “Do you want to learn?”

Teyla's young fingers tighten around the staffs and feel as though she's always known them. "Yes."

Ronon looks at Derwin who is waiting for an answer. He opens up his shirt and pulls his hair away from his neck. "Do it," he says.

Derwin nods and Ronon feels the needle touch his skin as he is marked a soldier.

"Hey, you don't have to if you don't want to," John's father says with a slightly disappointed smile.

Later on, John recalls it being like some kind of Ancient and mythical omen. A jet flies over their home, so fast it shakes the ground and it's like a metal eagle soaring above their heads.

That weekend, John will ask, "What does it feel like to fly, Dad?" and his father will tell him, looking the happiest he'll ever look.

"I do," John says. "I want to go."

His father watches him closely for a moment, like he can tell there's a man older than him under the skin of his son and John knows. This is real. It's not a dream. When his father laughs at him, eyes twinkling with humor, giving John a light pat, John grabs him and holds him because maybe they never did that before. Maybe they'll never do it again.

His father stills, his body stiff, but melting away quick until he's holding John. "John? You okay?"

John squeezes his eyes shut, swallows down a million things he can't remember being capable of feeling and then nods. Then he steps away and he's falling away towards somewhere every atom of his body recognizes as home.

When he opens his eyes, he and his team are surrounded by people and he can hear the sound of a stream close by. He can hear the sound of the wind in the trees. It's almost like being able to hear again.

Someone wraps a blanket around him, holding him as he throws up, shudders and blacks out.

The next time he wakes, everything feels like home. The lights are dim, but the sounds and smells say he's in the infirmary. He sinks down in the warmth of the bed, his ears zoning in on a quiet conversation.

He turns his head slightly and sees Elizabeth sitting on the edge of Teyla's bed, one bed away from his own, as they talk quietly. Rodney's not sure he wants to listen. He doesn't care. He's home and he's going to pretend none of it happened, whatever the hell it was.

Teyla plainly tells Elizabeth everything. How she isn't sure if it was a memory, if it was real. She's not even sure if the memories she does have are real. Maybe everything's been changed. How would she even know?

Elizabeth is cautious as she explains, “Teyla, Major Lorne and his team said you were only gone five minutes. Carson says you're all dehydrated and in need of a good meal. How could that happen in five minutes?”

“It was longer,” Ronon says from the bed next to Teyla, his voice low and menacing. “We were there longer. I know. I'm not crazy.”

“No one's saying that, Ronon,” Elizabeth says.

Rodney sighs and blinks up at the ceiling, which, thankfully, isn't dark and closing in on him. After a moment, he turns his head to the other side and sees John lying in his bed. He's completely still and his eyes are shut. He's pretending to sleep. It's why Rodney's not bothered about waking him when he notices the bandage.

“What happened to your wrist?” Rodney asks quietly, behind him, Elizabeth still talking to Teyla and Ronon.

John's eyes open slowly and he's lying there blinking up at the ceiling. “Must have fallen on it,” he says with that easy drawl of his.

Rodney nods. Then he frowns, hesitating before asking, “Do you think we're nuts?”

John finally turns his head to look at Rodney and there's something oddly bruised looking about him, even in his eyes. He frowns, in a familiarly comical fashion when he asks Rodney, “Remember the time I shot you and then threw you off a balcony?”

Rodney thinks about it and nods. “Right.”

He lies back, still nodding. Of course they're all nuts, they'd have to be, at least a little. So Rodney asks the next question. “You think we did that to them?”

John doesn't say anything, so Rodney asks. “You think they were lying?”

When Rodney looks at him, John seems far away. “Maybe we meant to do something else and got it wrong.”

Rodney thinks of something to say to that, but he imagines it so clearly, he finds nothing to say at all. Fucking up seems all too possible. Especially in Pegasus.

“You know what I don't understand,” John says slowly and Rodney bets to himself that whatever it is that John doesn't understand, he probably understands too well. “If they could mess with time, why didn't they just go back and do whatever needed to be done?”

Rodney nods. He thinks it through quickly. “Maybe they did.”

John frowns at Rodney. “What?”

Rodney shrugs. “Maybe they tried and screwed up and like many of the residents of this friendly galaxy they blame us.”

“Maybe,” John says, nodding. Rodney watches him sigh, going boneless. A few minutes later he closes his eyes and Rodney can tell he's really asleep this time.

Rodney closes his eyes too and tries to remember something untouched by the recent events. He lays his hand flat on the bed, fingers touching the blanket to stop himself from feeling the papercut, tapping out an old tune while he wonders who screwed up first.

**\- the end -**


End file.
